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Simon Scardifield’s new dramatization of Muriel Spark’s startling portrait of peacetime in London.

Summer, 1945. Victory in Europe has just been announced. A group of young women brace for the future as the shattered world around them is put back into place. Neither they, nor Britain, will ever be the same again.

The intelligent, but plain, Jane Wright is pursuing her dream career in the ‘world of books’. Jane lives at the May of Teck Club, a London hostel for girls of ‘slender means’. Also resident is the dazzling Selina Redwood, who values elegance above everything. And Joanna Childe, an elocution teacher whose poetry recitations keep the world at arm’s length. The slimmest girls of the May of Teck like to escape via a small toilet window to sunbathe on the roof. This summer feels full of possibility, novelty and thrill.

But – unbeknownst to all - a danger is lying in wait. And it will threaten to destroy the world as they know it.

We follow Jane, hungry for life and freedom, through the unpredictable, transformative summer months of 1945.

CAST (in order of appearance)
Narrator ….. Maggie Service
George/Felix ….. Joseph Kloska
Jane ….. Rose Basista
Anne ….. Madeleine Gray
Tilly ….. Tanvi Virmani
Greggie ….. Rhiannon Neads
Joanna ….. Ell Potter
Selina ….. Cecilia Appiah
Rudi ….. Mihai Arsene
Nicholas ….. Barney Fishwick

Dramatist ….. Simon Scardifield
Director ….. Anne Isger
Sound ….. Andrew Garratt, Neva Missirian
Production Co-ordinator ….. Gaelan Davis-Connolly

A ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Studios Audio production for ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 4